Dozens of songs, including “Let’s Do It,” “Love for Sale,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Anything Goes,” “In the Still of the Night,” and “I Concentrate on You”
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Edited by Robert Kimball

“Any treasury of Porter’s classic ditties ought to be worth its weight in gilded wit, and this edition is no exception. It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely. . . . His technical prowess as a versifier wasn’t just his best-kept secret—it was the secret weapon of his urbane charm.”—David Barber, The New York Times Book Review

Overview

Table of Contents

Overview

Cole Porter possessed to a singular degree the art of expressing depth through apparent frivolity. The effervescent wit and technical bravura of his songs are matched by their unguarded revelations of feeling. In the words of editor Robert Kimball, “Porter wrote tellingly of the pain and evanescence of emotional relationships. He gently mocked propriety and said that few things were simple or lasting or free from ambiguity.” Of the masters of twentieth-century American songwriting, Porter was one of the few who wrote both music and lyrics, and, even in the absence of his melodies, his words distill an unmistakable mixture of poignancy and wit that marks him as a genius of light verse.

Selected from over eight hundred songs, here are Porter’s finest flights of invention, lyrics that are an indelible part of 20th-century culture: “Let’s Do It,” “Love for Sale,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Anything Goes,” “In the Still of the Night,” “I Concentrate on You,” and dozens more.

Robert Kimball is a historian of the American musical theater whose books include The Gershwins (with Alfred Simon), Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake (with William Bolcom), Reading Lyrics (with Robert Gottlieb), and volumes devoted to the complete lyrics of Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Frank Loesser. He is the longtime advisor to the Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trust, and the editor of several books on Cole Porter. He received a Drama Desk Award for his rediscovery of lost musical-theater manuscripts in a Secaucus, New Jersey warehouse.

About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.

Table of Contents

Bull Dog
Antoinette Birby
I’ve a Shooting Box in Scotland
War Song
Old-Fashioned Garden
When I Had a Uniform On
Two Little Babes in the Wood
I’m in Love Again
Let’s Misbehave
The Laziest Gal in Town
Weren’t We Fools?
Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love
Which?
Wake Up and Dream
Looking at You
What Is This Thing Called Love?
I’m a Gigolo
You Do Something to Me
You’ve Got That Thing
The Tale of the Oyster
You Don’t Know Paree
I’m Unlucky at Gambling
I Worship You
The Queen of Terre Haute
Why Don’t We Try Staying Home?
Love For Sale
I Happen to Like New York
After You, Who?
Night and Day
I’ve Got You on My Mind
Mister and Missus Fitch
The Physician
Miss Otis Regrets
I Get a Kick Out of You
All Through the Night
You’re the Top
Anything Goes
Blow, Gabriel, Blow
Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough-Goodby
Don’t Fence Me In
Begin the Beguine
Just One of Those Things
Easy To Love
I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye
Ours
Down in the Depths
It’s De-Lovely
Ridin’ High
Red, Hot and Blue
In the Still of the Night
At Long Last Love
Get Out of Town
My Heart Belongs to Daddy
I Concentrate on You
But in the Morning, No
Well, Did You Evah!
Katie Went to Haiti
I’ve Still Got My Health
I’m Throwing a Ball Tonight
Make It Another Old-Fashioned, Please
Dream-Dancing
Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye
So Near and Yet So Far
Let’s Not Talk About Love
You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To
I Love You
Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye
I Wrote a Play
Be a Clown
Another Op’nin’, Another Show
So in Love
I’ve Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua
I Hate Men
Were Thine That Special Face
Too Darn Hot
Where Is the Life That Late I Led?
Always True to You in My Fashion
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
Use Your Imagination
I Am Loved
They Couldn’t Compare to You
Nobody’s Chasing Me
From This Moment On
I Am in Love
It’s All Right With Me
Can-Can
Who Said Gay Paree?
I Love Paris
All of You
Stereophonic Sound
Siberia
You’re Sensational